Barker Hugh - Faking it the quest for authenticity in popular music

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

WHEN WE LISTEN TO popular music, some songs strike us as real and others as fake. This book explores that distinction, and how, especially in the last fifty years, the quest for authenticity, for the real, has become a dominant factor in musical taste. Whether it be the folklorists search for forgotten bluesmen, the rock critics elevation of raw power over sophistication, or the importance of bullet wounds to the careers of hip-hop artists, the aesthetic of the authentic musical experience, with its rejection of music that is labeled contrived, pretentious, artificial, or overly commercial, has played a major role in forming musical tastes and canons, with wide-ranging consequences.

What do we mean when we call something authentic? A lot of things, as it turns out, but the word seems to be defined primarily in opposition to faking it. In a KISS concert, the band wears makeup and plays songs about people they pretend to be, all with the explicit aim of making money rather than telling the truth about themselves or the world they live in. Such a performance can be wildly entertaining, but its not considered authentic.

When people say a musical performance or recording is authentic, they might refer to representational authenticity, or music that is exactly what it says it isunlike, say, Milli Vanilli posing as singers, which they werent. They might refer to cultural authenticity, or music that reflects a cultural traditionthe traditional black guitarist and singer Mississippi John Hurts version of Stagger Lee, an old African American song about an outlaw, is more culturally authentic than the Grateful Deads. They might refer to personal authenticity, or music that reflects the person or people who are making itwhen Ozzy Osbourne sings Iron Man, he tells us nothing about his own life, but when Loretta Lynn sings Coal Miners Daughter, she tells us a lot.

Every performance is to some degree fakednobody goes out on stage and sings about exactly what they did and felt that day. Authenticity is an absolute, a goal that can never be fully attained, a quest. Sincerity and autobiography are techniques one can employ in the service of personal authenticity, just as using traditional instruments and singing old songs are techniques one can use in the service of cultural authenticity. But its important to distinguish the means from the end.

This quest for authenticity has inspired countless musicians to make heartfelt and often groundbreaking music, from Jimmie Rodgers, a pioneer of country music, to Kurt Cobain, a pioneer of alternative rock. On the other hand, some great musicincluding entire genres such as rockabilly, Bubblegum, and discohas been scorned as inauthentic. At times, the need to keep it real has limited the kinds of music that musicians aspire to make and that critics and listeners appreciate.

White blues fans, for example, redefined the genre in the name of authenticity to exclude anything too jazzy or upbeat, thus enforcing a snobbish and racist exclusion of certain blues artists from the canon because they were too sophisticated. Instead, they lauded the most primitive blues artists they could find, such as John Lee Hooker, from whom blacks turned away. In this way, the quest for authenticity did tremendous damage to the blues by codifying certain traditions and limiting innovation.

Now, after punk, house, grunge, garage, and hip-hop, ideas of authenticity have seeped into even such transparently inauthentic genres as heavy metal (Metallica), techno (Moby), and showtunes ( Rent ). Especially in the music aimed at white teenage males, authenticity is seen as the sine qua non of artistic success. It is rare to come across a songwriter, rock singer, or rapper these days who does not aim to keep it real for his audience, or who doesnt talk about the difference between making it and selling out. Listeners too are acutely conscious of how much the artists they admire are faking it. It seems that one of the job requirements for a popular musician these days is convincing your audience that youre not the phony celebrity you appear to be. Case in point: Jennifer Lopezs biggest hit ran, Dont be fooled by the rocks that I gotIm just Jenny from the block. Even Donna Summer, the queen of disco and a brilliant musical innovator, castigates her former self as fake in her autobiography, Ordinary Girl .

Of course, for many there is no distinction between real and fake: witness Courtney Loves statement, I fake it so real that Im beyond fake. In certain subcultures, being natural is either suspect or out of the question, and being theatrical is the only real possibility. For many academics as well, everything is more or less constructed, and, as the Beatles said, Nothing is real.

But while we dont claim that the distinctions we make in this book will apply to everyone, being authentic, or real, has been important to a large number of musicians and their fans, and thats where this book comes in. A number of other books have praised the virtues of authenticity and damned the fakes and the sellouts, but its surprising that no single book has ever addressed the subject in all its complexity or shown how the quest for authenticity has shaped the music we listen to. Its as if the concept of realism in art had never been fully addressedas if the only books on the subject praised verisimilitude. The question of authenticity in popular music is not only fundamental to understanding the musics history but fundamental to thinking about, listening to, and performing it as well.

Faking It tackles this question by examining, in detail, ten turning points in music history, at most of which the musicians were faced with a choice: fake it or keep it real. Why were these choices made and what were the consequences? We start with Kurt Cobains choice of a Leadbelly song to close his career, and then go in chronological order from early twentieth-century field recordings to Mobys use of them at the turn of the twenty-first century. Along the way, we discuss the birth of modern country music, the moment Elvis reinvented rocknroll, the Monkees decision to actually play their instruments, the defining moment of disco with a seventeen-minute faked orgasm, the public image of punk rock, and much more.

ALTHOUGH THIS BOOK is an entirely collaborative effort, in which we read, commented on, and revised each others chapters, for the sake of clarity wed like to note that the primary author of chapters 5, 7, and 8 is Hugh Barker, and the primary author of chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6 is Yuval Taylor; this introduction and chapters 1, 9, and 10 were composed in tandem.

The authors would like to thank their wives and children for their patience and generosity. We would also like to thank Jake Austen, Alan Barker, Ken Burke, Stephen Calt, Paul Elie, Andy Newman, Duncan Proudfoot, David Scott, and Elijah Wald, all of whom looked over portions of this book and gave us valuable feedback. Finally, we would like to thank our agent, William Clark, and our editor, Amy Cherry, who have helped to shape this book in significant ways, vastly improving it in the process.

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